Greg Cote: Defiant Miami Heat rises to new heights

This is what champions do. They rise up. They answer doubts and opponents with a vengeance and assassin’s eyes. They somehow summon their greatness just when the stage is biggest and loudest, just when you wonder if they can.

And they do it when everything is teetering — when they simply must.

The Heat rose up here Monday night.

Emphatically, in one of the biggest games in the history of South Florida sports, the Heat rose up.

Chris Bosh? His offensive slump continued (nine points), but he contributed eight rebounds and set a tone with his motor on defense.

But Wade! He was the star of the game.

Fighting past that bruised right knee, he was as active as we’ve seen him all postseason, scoring 21 points to end a career-worst streak of 12 straight games not hitting 20.

“My team did some things to loosen me up early, and my confidence kept growing,” said Wade.

He was being modest.

Said Spoelstra, of Wade: “When you count him out and you need him most and the competition is at its fiercest, he’s going to be there for you. He has a way in big games of getting bigger.”

Spoelstra himself deserves credit, too.

He had LeBron guard Pacers star Paul George, which not only erased George and held him to seven points, but also freed up Wade to not exert so much energy defending George.

Two late snapshots told you how merrily the night went and ended for Miami.

LeBron exited the game with 5:05 still to play, his early rest well earned.

Exhausted, James still had the presence of mind to offer a respectful fist-bump to soccer heart throb David Beckham, seated courtside.

At 3:44 Wade left the game to a huge, appreciative standing ovation, and leading the applause was club president Pat Riley.

You must understand, Riley usually is as stoic during games as if he were made of marble.

It takes a lot for him to applaud. Wade had shown him a lot.

Everybody rose up.

I include the fans who made a blizzard of white inside the downtown bayside arena, and all but made the place sway with noise and delight.

The “Let’s go Heat!” chants didn’t even wait for the game to start.

Every seat was filled before tipoff — almost unheard of here. I have not heard the building louder all season, and with reason.

This was only the eighth time in our sports history Miami has hosted a Game 7 in basketball, baseball or hockey.

And only when the Marlins were winning a World Series championship the night of Oct. 26, 1997, did any of those Game 7s feel bigger than this one newly won.

“It’s such a beautiful place to be, a Game 7,” noted Spoelstra.

(Prettier still when you win!)

The way the Heat played and the way the crowd sounded both showed an awareness of everything in play.

All knew how big this game was. The rectangle of the court couldn’t hold it. The stakes were far greater.

For this team only, they always are – this team that must win everything or hear somebody calling it a failure.

A loss by the favored, reigning champs would have seen all of the harshest critics out of their caves and howling again, the national media labeling Miami’s Big 3 era a disappointment and effectively finished.

A loss would also have enflamed some small signs of internal turmoil that had become evident earlier in this series. LeBron had said it was “obvious” Wade and Bosh were “struggling,” and that was why he “went back to my Cleveland days” in taking much more upon himself offensively.

Wade went public with wanting more “opportunities,” meaning more shots, more involvement. There was no mistaking he meant James when he criticized games coming down to one Heat player trying to “self-will it.”

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